POVERTY AND HAPPINESS 291 



deals in thousands of pounds. The impulses of 

 love may be satisfied by marriage more often, 

 it may well be, amongst the poor than amongst 

 the rich. Esthetic impulses may be gratified by 

 a street organ : and if they are developed more 

 abundantly by the rich, the poor have, as com- 

 pensation, ampler up-wellings of the ethical 

 aspirations that are manifested by the self-denial 

 of wives for their families and the astonishing 

 generosity of the working man. Poverty may 

 be unacquainted with the pleasures that are 

 derived from luxurious sensation may not be 

 tickled by the taste of truffles and champagne. 

 But happiness is more desirable than pleasure. 

 And the poor are, at all events, untroubled by the 

 pangs which are suffered by respectability in 

 maintaining appearances before the world. One 

 may, then, easily be too severe in condemning 

 modern society. Pessimistic criticism is very 

 attractive : indirectly it flatters one's own ideals. 

 It is probable, indeed, that the strictures of 

 moralists and divines have overrated considerably 

 the extravagances and miseries of the past ; and 

 in future centuries a student of our times may 

 be seriously misled by much that he may come 

 across in the accounts that we are giving of 

 ourselves in current literature. 1 



Human society has, then, developed into its 

 present complexity by the progressive adoption 

 and abandonment of various ideals, or habits of 

 mind. Submissiveness to a patriarch or a tyrant 

 has given way before notions of deference to the 

 majority, of liberty and equality. The idea of 



1 Is not there too much shadow in this opinion of Mr. Frederic 

 Harrison's? "Our present type of society is, in many respects, 

 one of the most horrible that has ever existed in the world's history 

 boundless luxury and self-indulgence at one end of the scale, and 

 at the other a condition of life as cruel as that of a Roman slave, 

 and more degraded than that of a South Sea Islander," 



